such games like civilization teach us about the various kinds of governments. is democracy really the best?
till now it seems it was. what has changed though is dimly a truth is taking shape: in future this might change!

all the various kinds of democracy have the weakness that once you know all voters you can manipulate them.
for now this danger has the name “google” or “Facebook”, some accuse the “NSA”. who cares how it’s called?
in the abstraction lies the truth, statistical methods are undermining the principles of democracy.
if to statistical analysis data becomes available that depicts our very soul, then our votes become predictable.
if you ever tried autofeedback methods for self-control you know what this means: commercials are becoming science.
so far they had not much power over us. so far making commercials was assigned to the artists.
but each individual’s data now is available. no more guesswork. just personalize commercials to those.

what makes things worse is that such a thing like “individual” mind doesn’t exist. no mind is unique.
it is our delusion to assume we would be different from each other. but truth is, we cannot know the truth!
statistically to judge if one of the billions of people on earth is alike to you, you’d need to know millions of them.
nobody knows millions of people personally. especially not to the degree to judge if their mind differs.
someone proposed the claim that there exist only about 20000 different individuals on earth.
everybody else is just a copy of those 20000 people, in terms of mind. I can’t prove such a claim, of course.
however, I can point out that the amount of possible faces is similarly limited. I guess everybody observed that.
bones and skin are determined by genes, but our face isn’t. every single muscle determines how we look.
so, if there ever exist 2 people with the same face, they probably also have the same mind.
at least when talking of which muscle is under tension when and how, minds must match for physical synchronisms.
I’m not saying identical twins would have the same mind. their faces usually diverge from each other over time.
and the other way around, people with the same mind don’t necessarily look alike. there’s still genetics and culture.
but I at least conclude that as long as people like Saddam can find a double, also mind-doubles probably exist.
based on this number above, I probably exist about 500000 times on earth.
now individualise a commercial to my mind, and you’ll catch half a million worldwide…

a good method against this danger is to give the government officially the power over personnel decisions.
a vote only determines the politician on the seat, but the real danger is when those politicians are being manipulated.
additionally whatever a commercial says, people can talk about it freely online — if government allows internet.
the real problem is whenever people are assembled to make a seemingly democratic decision.

democracy isn’t just votes, democracy also regulated how the text being voted about was to get created.
according to democracy some politicians are supposed to work together on formulating it.
but who decides what people are supposed to work together here? t isn’t the voters. they only elected the candidates!
some chief-politicians do that kind of decision, because they know who has the competence for good formulations.
this way personnel decisions are undemocratic because they require information that isn’t available to voters.
but this only goes for making laws. any other kind of discussion is being manipulated by other forces, in-transparently.

take for example a discussion between government and teachers. of course not all teachers of a country can participate.
who decides what teachers are allowed to take part in that discussion? usually it’s the labour union or similar!
again these kind of organizations are highly democratic, except only participants are allowed to vote.
now this is a small amount of voters, easy to manipulate each of them individually.
just let them vote for the candidate who is the easiest to manipulate. impossible to prevent.
however, if by manipulating those elected people the whole government is manipulated, this is a problem.
but what’s the worst those people could ever do? it’s selecting wrong people for a discussion!

especially in the area of science it’s visible how the right combination of people can help a project.
also when you ever observed whatever group of people, their hieve-mind changes depending on who has come.
they meet, somewhere, and only 10 people are there to discuss. one day the combination is good, another it isn’t.
out of 50 people those 10 can make a difference like between day and night, depending on who is among them.
even the most ingenious person could behave completely different if the right person is/isn’t present.

so I say, whenever government needs people to meet up and talk, government should decide who.
that’s what secret agencies are for, to investigate what is best for the country. so let them inform government.
then a meeting with teachers could easily go in favour of politicians. and if personnel decisions are transparent, even better.
let the politicians explain whom they chose and what list of people they had to choose from. let them explain their work.
when by law politicians are in charge of those decisions, people will see that electing the right politicians is important.
only problem is, who decides the list of people at an international conference? for example on global warming?
now for this I propose some sort of world-government. except it isn’t governing anything, but rather making conferences.
it should be an organization beyond nations, sort of united nations organization. or rather a conference-organization.

first and foremost such an organization should have an elected head. of course all participating countries have to elect him/her.
I propose that by organizing those elections a country automatically becomes a member, no real membership fees.
the only income of this conference organization should be the actual conferences, nothing else.
any other kind of income would undermine the independentness aspect of its reputation.
even this kind of income is already problematic, maybe such an organization would want to spam us down with conferences?
but here at least each country can decide on its own if it wants to participate. being spammed down would lower the participation.

the conference organization should have only 2 purposes: to organize a discussion, and to investigate the outcome.
more exactly it has to choose the participants, and has to verify if the countries know what has been discussed.

choosing participants is easy, just take the votes from each country’s representatives and count them.
maybe the head should have a veto in that, rejecting some participants. but more important is the choice of topics.
here the head definitely should have a veto-right after all countries decided what needs to be discussed.
again spamming down the countries is the reason behind that. the head would need to agree to the spamming.

to make it clear: again participants of conferences are chosen transparently. thanks to internet there is no limit.
the representatives get a list of people to choose from, and maybe using statistics and computer they choose.
each of them inputs what the goal of the choice shall be and the computer gives an estimate on who might achieve it.
no matter how they choose, list of candidates and list of participants must be public.
this way everyone can verify what computer-algorithm was used.
and thereby the representatives would better tell the truth. especially if they were chosen democratically.
as for topics, all representatives and the head may propose topics. they then discuss formulation.
if a topic is accepted by a majority then the conference will be held (unless head is against it).
all this of course is just a rough sketch of the rules. all this is subject to change by the head after voting.
however the basic rule of preparing and verifying the conference-work cannot be changed.

after the topic and participants have been chosen, the conference has been held, verification is very important.
each country taking part in the conference will be presented with several papers, formulated during conference.
each ministry gets at least one paper with concrete directions how to put things into action, readily formulated laws.
the head of the government gets another paper which explains how those laws work together.
each paper contains precise explanations why things have been formulated in the particular way.
one week later, or up to 3 months later the head of each ministry has to make an exam on these papers.
the conference-organization should prepare test-questions and make sure the ministry doesn’t cheat.
after the test the results are published. no more consequences arise from the conference. only understanding counts.

the idea behind those tests is that in a democracy population will get informed about the intelligence of politicians.
but even in a monarchy there might be a ministry, and the king/queen will then get informed of the ministry’s performance.
if there is no ministry at all, whatever illusions about him/her get shattered.
either way such a test will definitely be a humbling experience. not passing it will be a shame.
again a recording of the test will be available to everyone, along with questions and correct answers.
each ministry is tested about the papers related to it, head of government only about the connecting paper.
it is not acceptable some secretary takes the tests, it must be the people actually in charge.
the person who has the power to put the conference’s outcome into practice must be tested directly and transparently.

also important to mention, only countries which voted when the conference-organization’s head was elected, can participate.
each county then is responsible for making sure the elections are fair, regardless if it’s a democracy or not.
as for the country’s own representative in the organization, they may vote for that person too, but don’t need to.
it is sufficient when government just announces who gets to join the organization.

as for fees, it’s important also poor countries can participate. so the fees for the conference are relative to the country’s wealth.
but maybe instead of usual numbers the current financial situation should be used.
if the country has no debts, then the conference costs 0,1% of how much it increases what it owns, in terms of gold and such.
if the country has debts, it is paying an interest rate. 0,1% of those interest fees are the price for the conference.
however, no need for the country to immediately pay. the interest rate for those debts will be again 0,1% per year.
even better would be to wait 5 years, compare interest-fees then with those at the time of the conference and take the lower value.
during those 5 years, the debts don’t grow. no interest rate, only after that time. the currency for those debts is gold.

so, some degree of banking also belongs to the conference organization’s tasks.
another area of competence should be spying on all possible future participants of the conferences.
buying data from Facebook and such is probably sufficient though.
to create a list of possible participants, it’s enough to expect the volunteers to put some effort in their web-appearance…

in order to make all this happen one would need crowd-funding and some prominent politicians.
the job-description here is much alike to an ambassador or of someone working in high position of a secret service.
the crowd-funding would then pay that job till the conferences generate money.
keep in mind most countries have debts. that’s because as someone pointed out robots pay no taxes.
the more we trust machines to create stuff for us, the less income governments will get, till they’re broke.
solution is to eliminate taxes on income and tax only expenses. say, 100% of price then would be added as tax.
investing in this conference-organization would then be an investment into this kind of change of taxes.
if you are against high taxes on stuff you buy, then you are in favour of governments going broke.
quite understandable, most science-fiction starts out with the assumption police and judges will be privatized.
but then, don’t ever support whatever ideas that are trying to get some money out of the government.
such investments then generally will go down in the long run, as there’s no more money to get!

about politics in general I’ll talk at a later time.
however, now the usa have an election, and people think not-voting would do anything.
true, it’s quite shameful for a democracy to have below 50% election polls, as the eu does.
but in reality the reason why people don’t like to vote is because politics is too abstract for them.
there simply is no mechanism of “if I vote I will get a job and money”.

actually there is only one thing politics can do to create jobs:
open up a new company paid by the country, and hire.
quite a communistic approach romney proposed here:
create one company that digs holes and another that fills them again.
and then to earn some money the government will eventually sell both companies.
the buyer will then throw out the workers and sell the shovels.
if we’re lucky the buyer will keep the workers and make them do something else.
either way, the amount of jobs always depends on the amount of business-ideas.
and the amount of successful business-ideas depends on the amount of money clients have.
the more jobs, the more money for employees, the more jobs will be created in the sector of middle-class consume.
so if a government would really hire those diggers and hole-fillers, additionally more jobs would evolve.
but this way government would become poor, so it’d better be rich-people who create those 2 companies.
in other words, if you want more jobs, make the gap between rich and poor smaller!
only a robin hood, “stealing” from rich and giving to the poor, could be effective here.
no politician could ever do such a thing, rich people know how to avoid the government.

I wont spill out all the historical facts here, you can look them up yourself.
truth is rich people can afford an accountant or whatever person with good ideas.
and not only do they have the money, they usually also have the knowledge and networking in place to do so.
rich people know many rich people, and from them they can learn who’s good with juggling money.
you’d need to advance at least to upper middle-class to get access to them.
even the most introverted rich person will eventually meet other rich people.
the very action of earning large amounts of money makes this necessary.
as soon as government would do something against the rich, someone will find a cure.
and that cure will quickly spread throughout the whole network of people with lots of money.
similarly if there was a thief or opportunist among them, they’ll know sooner than a wannabe-rich.
the longer your family had lots of money, the more other rich people they will know.
they still can be taken by surprise, some scam might turn out to be scam only years later.
or maybe their desire to become richer could be used to pique their interest in some product.
government can’t do either of those. a hedge-fond or an iPhone might be more effective.
if a rich person wouldn’t take care to keep their money together, soon it wouldn’t be a rich person anymore.
my suggestion is: make them pay for them being the first to obtain some knowledge.
either there will be no gain for them this way, or they will create new jobs out of that.
that’s the modern way of playing robin-hood, sell your knowledge to the best bidder.
and after selling it give it away for free to everyone else (maybe after waiting some time).

politics has completely different duties. global warming for example is abstractly seen a matter of diplomatic co-operation.
peace in the country is the duty of politicians. decisions on what resources to plunder and infrastructure.
so if you ever see a politician promising to improve those 4 abstract subjects, vote for him/her! everything else politicians promise is bullshit.
politics simply has no power over anything else! it’s just diplomacy, peace, resources and infrastructure!

actually government has power only over one thing: real-estate.
a government is more alike to a land-owner who allows people to lend some land.
if you buy some land, then originally that land belonged to the government.
and if the government would wish so, it could disown you in this respect.
only for the sake of peace government does acknowledge your right to own it.
however, what you do not buy, is the right to do whatever you want on that land.
if you share a lake on your land with a neighbour, you are not allowed to drain all the water.
it’s the government which decides how resources found on the land get distributed.
if infrastructure needs to cross your land, government can disown you.
if your land or something on it violates diplomatic relationships, government can interfere.
same with roots for some violence reaching your land, government wont acknowledge your privacy.
police and military can commit trespassing all they want, as long as government commanded it.
so through owning the land, the government automatically becomes responsible for managing the 4 abstract topics.
diplomacy, peace, resources and infrastructure are 4 things every land-owner must manage somehow.

for this reason it also doesn’t matter what political system you have — as long as people have the possibility to be armed.
even a dictatorship will have to manage the 4 or else it will be at war with the population.
I’m not saying there’s any violent revolution that could ever be successful.
well, maybe if the military would start a revolution against its own dictator.
either way, the result is there’s no kingdom anymore to rule.
politics simply is too complicated for a single person to comprehend.
and with multiple people ruling there’ll always be someone who wants to evade riots.
even more so in a democracy with a whole parliament of rulers or in china with a party having millions of members.
in america the plutocracy is really not the fault in the system, it’s the voters who ignore the 4 duties of a politician.
not surprising when infrastructure is optimal, resources are cheap, violence is low, and diplomacy is in balance.
however, there’s still the question if some politician you vote for will destroy that optimally running system.
the 2 major parties likely wont. too big to fail. but can you really trust a presidential candidate to stay true to the party?

when voting there’s another thing to consider though, bureaucracy. now that’s something that needs correction.
as it is now the money entrusted to the government is spent for ancient structures of employees who work against eachother.
on the other hand giving the same money to some poor country could improve your country’s exports.
just make sure a very large amount of people will get that money.
if the government is already wasting money, make sure it wont end up in some hidden vault like swiss banks and such.
or alternatively modernize bureaucracy so that fewer people work for government, more computers/robots are used, less wages to pay.
let people who live in the country take part in ruling it, they’ll do it for free if it isn’t too much work for the individual.

of course schools are too an important duty of a government, no way schools can be handled by private companies.
but I count that as bureaucracy too, it’s part of our resource-management since knowledge is a resource.
in my posting about economy I said: to create Knowledge you must feed a human’s mind with science-methods.
the better people are at science-ing or whatever other abilities, the more knowledge the country has.
and it should be mentioned that rich population isn’t enough, someone, not necessarily rich, must have an idea.
if people don’t have abilities for creating ideas, the country will soon be outperformed by others who do.
so education is a matter of various countries racing against eachother, and so far usa had a winning streak.
well maybe that was partly because of the lax laws on who is allowed to do what, and partly because of size.
but that soon could change because of some of the richer big countries being more lax on what to research.
so a bit of less emotion and less “intelligence”, more randomness, that would be great for funding research…

the secret to democracy is that everything is extremely slow, basically you’d need 1 generation for a change.
the old bureaucrats must retire before they can be replaced by machines.
the tiny problem in democracy is that politicians get to decide on their own jobs and the jobs of their friends.
wait 50 years and the problem is gone, simply through the noob who gets ambushed by change…

to summarize: if you don’t care about anything related to the abstract concepts of resources, infrastructure, diplomacy and peace, don’t vote.
if you do care, then vote for someone who does too, regardless of what chances that person has for winning.
very likely others will vote for the same person, because it’s logical those topics matter.
but if it’s jobs you want to create, take a loan and hire people to work towards your ideas.
if you’re lacking ideas or are bored, then get education, as much knowledge as you can obtain and start from there.
even if you go broke, your employees will have more money to spend, other companies will sprout.
and if you ever have to decide from whom to buy or to whom to sell, never choose big companies.
they likely wont hire new people, only small companies do.
and if it’s knowledge and research you do care for, for example medicine, make sure that’s done in other countries.
the less rich a country, the cheaper the workforce, the more efficient research will be.
because, it really isn’t location of research that counts, it’s what you teach in your schools that will rise innovation!
so in that case, instead of voting, go to a poor country and start teaching and researching!
everybody must actually do something for the own dreams, a vote wont do it!
what a vote does do is to take away the non-voter votes, the more people vote the less non-voters there will be.
sounds like too obvious to mention, but most people are not aware of what this means:
the votes of non-voters get always distributed in the same way as if they would have voted like everyone else.
so if you have to choose if you should vote for a small party that wont succeed, or if not voting at all, choose the former.
if you do not vote there is not even the remotest chance your vote would change anything.
if a new party would get a dangerous amount of votes, soon the big party will take over the small one’s topics.
just keep in mind that voting definitely doesn’t change anything for you as an individual. it might change your children’s world though.
voting rather has an immediate influence on other voters, it’s a way of communication. not-voting is communication too, of the non-verbal kind.
just see your vote as a hobby. a spare-time activity alike to chatting on the net or blogging. I do.
and I take this hobby seriously. nobody would build a model railroad without proper planning either!
so why vote for the most pious candidate? why not of collecting and studying the available facts and getting your own impression?
being pious might be important for diplomacy. but politicians are much more than that! 4 times as much!